Dish with Bird on Fruit Tree Branch

Among the greatest achievements of early Qing porcelain are table wares and display objects decorated with polychrome painting like this pair of dishes. Featuring birds perched in peach trees, the dishes are related to the famous birthday set commissioned for the Kangxi emperor’s sixtieth birthday in 1713. These pieces are more inventive than those in the 1713 set, however, since the unframed ornament is allowed to continue unbroken from the outer to inner surfaces and back out again, thus transforming each vessel into a three-dimensional canvas.